Page 38 of Trade
For some reason, they remind me of the minke whale skeleton that hangs from the ceiling of the display room of the Department of Zoological Preservation. When I was a kid, I’d stand under the bleached bones, look up, and pretend I was an aquanaut on the seafloor.
I traipse along, at this point fueled by nothing more than wonder and astonishment, and my chest aches. What were we doing? Dad and my teachers, spending all that time teaching us about every plant and animal that used to exist, making sure we knew that we exist to commemorate them, that whatused to bewas so much greater and more important than whatis.
And all that time—life was out here all along, and not bones and dust, but real, living things, making their way about their business, oblivious to the people under a mountain so worried about a past long gone by.
Did it ever make sense?
“Has the Outside always been like this?” I break the silence to ask Dalton, who is strolling beside me now, wearing his pack on his front to give his back a break. Another man would look silly. He looks adorable.
“What do you mean?” he asks through a mouthful of what smells like apple. He’s got the front pouch of his pack open, and he’s snacking.
“Like . . . green and alive. We were always told—well—it was understood that everything had been destroyed, and there was nothing left but barren dust and destruction.”
The crease between his eyes appears. “But you all have seen the Outside. Your guards. The women. You know what it’s like out here.”
I shrug. “No one talks.”
He clearly doesn’t understand, but he decides to answer my question. “It’s always been like this since I was born. Dad never said it was any different when he was young. There’s plenty of destroyed and abandoned shit, though. Not so much here in the valley, but everywhere else. Stuff’s not dusty, though. Mostly, it’s covered with vines. Kudzu. That shit will grow up your leg if you don’t move fast enough.”
“And there’s water?”
“Yeah.” He refocuses on my face. “No one ever told you what it was like Outside?”
I shake my head, but a memory floats forward in my brain. Dad, sitting next to me in my cot, me tucked under the covers and him on top with his boots hanging off the edge. He never took his boots off until he got into his own bed in case Administration called him out for an emergency. He hated untying them just to have to tie them up again.
Our bedtime routine always involved poring over whichever book had caught my interest. He’d flip to a random page and ask me what I knew, and I was so proud to spout off all the facts I remembered so easily. He’d pipe in with anecdotes and tidbits he’d picked up. If a blue crab lost a leg or claw, he could grow it back. The spring peeper produced a natural antifreeze so it could freeze solid in winter and wake up come spring. There was a tree called the giant sequoia, and not only was its bark fire-resistant, but fire itself opened its cones to release seeds.
Several times, I’d wake up hours later and find him still poring over the pages, tracing the pictures with his fingers. Lovingly. Longingly.
Did he know this was out here?
Suddenly, my view changes, like I’m at the eye doctor and he adjusts a dial on his machine and asks, “Which is better? One?” Click. “Or two?”
Maybe Dad didn’t want me to be the head of department because he knew what was out here, or he suspected, or he had no idea, but he still wished this for me. An impossible dream. I was always so mad because what was he doing all those years if not preparing me to take his place? But he wasn’t teaching me to push paper and compile budgets. He was teaching me the medicinal properties of plants, which are edible, which are toxic, how to help things grow. Scarification. Stratifications. Cuttings.
How life survives.
There have been so many times since he died that I’ve wanted to have just one more conversation. Mostly I wanted to have one more cry where he tells me everything will be okay.
But maybe if I did get that last conversation, he wouldn’t tell me that at all. Maybe he’d tell me to get out and run.
“Hey,” Dalton says. He’s watching me with concern, always watching me. “Come this way.” He leads me off the course we’ve been taking through the middle of a meadow to a cluster of trees atop a low hill.
I’m too lost in thought to question what we’re doing until we’re standing at the foot of a huge sugar maple with a split trunk. It’s at least twenty feet tall with a practical ladder of branches and boughs. Excitement swirls in my stomach, and I look at Dalton. His lips curve. He’s thinking what I’m thinking.
“I’m going to climb it.”
“That’s why we’re here, Queen Glory. There is what’s left of an old building maybe a quarter mile to the south. You should be able to see it if you get high enough.”
“You can drop that queen business,” I say, gauging the tree’s layout. He picked a good one, although how he managed to pick it out while staring at me, I couldn’t say.
“Hey, now. You’ve still got your crown.” He’d attached it to his backpack with a carabiner when it started to annoy me.
“You’re a terrible flirt.” I wedge my boot in the split of the trunk.
“To be fair, I haven’t had any practice,” he says, seizing my butt with both hands without warning and boosting me up into the tree. “You’re the first woman I ever really talked to for more than a few words.”
I turn to stare down at him. He grins up. There are those dimples again. “Seriously?”
